Pete Davidson opts out of going to space
Pete Davidson, the “Saturday Night Live” comedian and actor, will no longer travel to the edge of space on the next Blue Origin spaceflight, the company said late Thursday.
The company had announced this week that its New Shepard rocket would launch March 23 with Davidson and five other passengers. But the launch, the company's fourth with human passengers, has now been rescheduled for March 29, Blue Origin said on Twitter.
The company, founded by Jeff Bezos, said Davidson, 28, was “no longer able to join” the mission and a replacement sixth crew member would be announced soon. No further details were given. Requests for comment from Blue Origin and Davidson were not immediately returned Friday. A spokeswoman for “Saturday Night Live” said the show would not be airing new episodes this week or next.
A Blue Origin spokeswoman had said this week that Davidson would fly as an “honorary guest,” while the remaining five passengers were paying customers. They have been identified as Marty Allen, Sharon and Marc Hagle, Jim Kitchen and George Nield.
While the members of the group come from a variety of backgrounds, it is unclear how much they were each charged to join the flight.
Allen is a former CEO of Party America, the party-supply store. Marc Hagle is the president and CEO of Tricor International, a residential and commercial property development company. Sharon Hagle founded the nonprofit group SpaceKids Global. Kitchen is a professor of the practice of strategy and entrepreneurship at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And Nield is the president of Commercial Space Technologies and for 10 years was the associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency that regulates commercial launches like Blue Origin's.
It is unclear if Blue Origin will select another celebrity to take Davidson's seat.